Instead of your Life's Purpose

The non-linear approach is different – rather than trying to discover a particular arc path and follow it to its conclusion, it recognizes that there will be many different moments and opportunities to create meaning that arise in our life.

There are profound asymmetries and power laws at play in the pursuit of meaning – a split second decision might be the most important one you make; years of lounging around in cafes and on beaches might pay off more than years of hard work - if it results in one extremely good idea.

Time is not fungible – a given moment of opportunity, or a chance to respond appropriately to a crisis, might not occur again.

There are Twitter threads made by anonymous writers which contain more insight than most published academic papers, and memes which capture the human condition better than most works found in art galleries.

An alternate approach is a non-linear approach. It is premised on the idea that life is full of randomness punctuated by sudden moments – crises and opportunities – with vast potential for meaning making, when our skills and virtues shine.

There is a common misperception of what makes life meaningful. It is the idea that we have a special purpose in life – and that once we find it, all our confusion ends.

Instead of looking for a cause to devote your life to, you might try to become someone who is useful and level-headed in a crisis, who is well connected and makes friends easily, or who regularly has good ideas.

Most of us, however, develop a portfolio of meaning – we have multiple sources of it in our lives, and cannot in fact derive it from only one source any more than we can be healthy on a diet of bread and water.

This means not waiting to find your story arc, but rather recognizing that there are stories that pop up which you can opt into if you recognize them and have the right skills and virtues.

But the non-linear approach to meaning is about becoming a certain kind of person, the person who will, when given a chance, act effectively to realize their values in this world, even if those values are not articulable except as a felt sense of meaning. It requires us to become developed along multiple axes of development: capable of risking it a... See more